


so bright she could burn your eyes (better look the other way)

by crocs



Series: Things That Go Bump in The (K)night [1]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Backstory, Alternate Universe - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fusion, Canon-Typical Violence, Female Eggsy Unwin, Gen, Mild Language, Minor Character Death, Post-Episode: s07e22 Chosen, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-04
Packaged: 2019-03-25 12:41:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13834494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocs/pseuds/crocs
Summary: When she's five years old, wide eyed and fresh off of her first term in Year One, Harry Hart tells her mum that her dad died to save his life.When she's fourteen, all hard edges and too-sharp eyes and her dad's medal hanging like a dead weight from her neck, Rupert Giles tells her mum that Eggsy might very well fucking die to save lives too.'Eggsy the Vampire Slayer' does have a nice fucking ring to it, thinks Eggsy.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own Kingsman or Buffy.

When she's five years old, wide eyed and fresh off of her first term in Year One, Harry Hart tells her mum that her dad died to save his life.

When she's fourteen, all hard edges and too-sharp eyes and her dad's medal hanging like a dead weight from her neck, Rupert Giles tells her mum that Eggsy might very well fucking die to save lives too.

Mum doesn't take the news that Eggsy, in Mr. Giles' words, is _special_ well. She sobs, hard and hysterical, and Mr. Giles' friend (blonde, tan, breathtakingly beautiful and American and almost out of place in their dingy council flat with her bright white smile if not for the fact that it's totally fake, which Eggsy's seen all too well from her own face in the mirror whenever Dean's mates come around) has to comfort her.

Eggsy just counts her lucky stars that Dean's off his arse at the pub instead of with them at that moment. She knows all too well how he would react if he was.

The first solution for Eggsy learning to control her "abilities" is for Eggsy to be sent away to their boarding school. Mr. Giles tries to explain, clinically, what that would mean — Eggsy being shipped off up north for three months a year for an education and what just about amounts to a Royal Marine's training on steroids — but Eggsy cuts him off where he stands because there's no fucking way in hell she's gonna leave her mum to deal with Dean.

The second is for Eggsy and her whole family to be uprooted and moved up north and for Eggsy to become a day-boarder at the school. Eggsy crosses that one out in her mind as soon as he says it. As much as she fucking absolutely despises to admit it, the estate is her _home_.

And it's not just her's, it's her mum's too, and Jamal's, and Ryan's and Brandon's and Liam's, and no matter how much they joke about how there must be something wrong with her for her to only hang out with boys instead of girls she isn't ready to leave them behind.

She has half a mind to ask Mr. Giles (who obviously comes from money by the way he's awkwardly shifting when her mum mentions how little they have) to move them all wherever the fuck this school is when Mr. Giles' friend gives them the third option.

The third option is for Eggsy to stay exactly where she is, but to spend her after school time (her _netball_ time, she can hear Miss Birstnall say in her head, and tries to mentally prepare herself for the conversation she's going to have with her sports teacher come the end of the Christmas holidays) training with the instructors that they have stationed in London already to hone her abilities.

Eggsy takes it.

Mr. Giles' friend explains that while the facilities in London aren't much compared to the ones up north — they still haven't explained where exactly the school is — they're adequate enough to train her and the others that have opted for it. She says the word adequate like it's stuck in her throat — ' _adequat_ ' — and Eggsy notes that her accent is the same kind of American Valley Girl accent that Brandon and Ryan mimic whenever Eggsy accidentally says 'oh my god' out loud.

They leave after Eggsy fixes her mum up with a mug of PG Tips made dealing-with-Dean-style (skip the boiled water and the teabag and the milk and the sugar and put gin in the mug instead) and they've given her all the details about Option Three. Eggsy watches them walk through the front door and go down the stairs through the barred window, and clasps the school leaflet and the number they gave her to call tightly in her left hand as Dean saunters up the same stairwell.

She disappears into her room not long after she sees them reach the final steps and pretends she can't hear Dean yelling at her mum when the door slams minutes later.

When she opens the leaflet to read it by the shitty little LED clip on reading light that she normally has stuffed in her bottom drawer along with all the crap that she's received for Christmas from her mates over the years, she assures herself that she's just curious, that's all. There's no way Eggsy'd want to go to that poncy school where she'd get (from the look of the Year Eight sitting on the horse on the cover) fucking brainwashed into a cult or something.

The inside of the leaflet's just as boring and bland as the outside. It looks like any one of the posh secondary school flyers that Eggsy's mum had picked up when she had briefly entertained the idea of sending her to one. Eggsy stares at one of the small pictures that decorate the leaflet. Two girls fencing without any safety equipment on.

The faces are blurred to the point that Eggsy can't even determine what they look like at all.

She chucks the leaflet into her bottom drawer and stuffs the phone number into her school bag and vows to never call them.

—

The next day is a Monday, the first day back at school.

First period goes well; Liam lets her copy off his English homework because she forgot to do it, and Lucy K and Lucy J manage to hit Mr. Conwell in the side with a scrunched up bit of paper that was aimed at her. Eggsy senses it coming and ducks it and tries desperately hard not to laugh when their head of year takes them out of the lesson to bollock them. It doesn't work and Brandon curses her out because he has a hangover and 'your insane witch cackle isn't fucking helping, Eggs'.

She has P.E. second period. Lucy J hits her in the head with a dodgeball. Miss Birstnall snipes at her and tries to guilt trip her into staying on the Netball team.

She accidentally breaks off one of the screwed in coathooks in the changing rooms at school with her bare hands. She hides in a bathroom stall with the coathook wrapped in toilet paper and flushes it down the loo.

She calls the number.

 _"Hello?"_ the person picking up replies, sounding utterly bored out of their mind.

Eggsy shifts. "Er, hi? I was told to call this number if I, well —"

The person on the other line sighs. _"Please hold,"_ they intone, and the unmistakable tinny sound of Frank Sinatra sounds out through her flip phone's crap speaker. Eggsy cups the speaker with her hand, trying to silence it, and almost doesn’t hear the phone being picked back up on the other line.

 _"Go for Buffy,"_ a valley girl accent calls through her cupped hands crisply. Mr. Giles' friend.

"It's, um, the girl from the other night. I wanted to ask if —"

Eggsy can hear her brighten down the line. _"Eggy!"_

"It's Eggsy, actually."

_"Oops. Your name is kind of odd, though."_

For a minute, Eggsy can't think whether she means 'Eggsy' or the monstrosity that is her actual first name.

"Says the fucking woman whose name's Buffy. Sorry," she adds, realising that running her mouth might not be for the best.

 _"It's okay, I shouldn't throw stones at glass houses,"_ she laughs, and Eggsy doesn't have the heart to correct her to 'in' because she has the sinking feeling that Buffy might have actually thrown stones at glass houses. _"Before we start, I need to ask you a question. This job requires a lot of commitment, and it doesn't slow down. Ever. It can get too much. You need to be ready to be brave. Are you?"_

The medal that hangs on a chain from her neck feels much lighter now. Almost as if Lee Unwin would be proud of what she's doing. Man died saving that posh bloke's life, she reminds herself, and thinks about the eye colour they apparently share and how apparently they don't just look similar too.

'Eggsy the Vampire Slayer' does have a nice fucking ring to it, thinks Eggsy.

—

And so Eggsy spends every other day after school training with some other Slayers on the third floor of her local charity shop. She finally gets some girl friends — ones that don't care whether she comes into school wearing makeup or not and don't whisper behind her back when she and the boys sit too close together on cold days at lunch. She rotates between learning about myths and learning how to beat those myths up. She makes a MySpace page mainly to make fun of Jamal's totally serious angsty music page. Life goes on.

It's five and a half months before they assign her a Watcher.

In that time, Eggsy learns how to plait her hair from Paige Jones, who's two years older and has had these powers since she was 10 and still cries watching The Notebook. Amanda teaches her how to count cards, and Amala teaches her how to not get caught doing it. Samuelle guides her on how to throw a punch. Mrs Howard, who's sixty seven and manages the charity shop and sometimes brings up cups of tea and biscuits, makes sure Eggsy knows which fork and knife to use with each course when dining and how to knit.

It's a good skill. She knits Ryan a football cosy and he actually fucking puts it on during his team's pre-match kickabout. Madman.

Her new Watcher's name is Forsythe Hesketh. He insists on being addressed as _Mr. Hesketh_ by Eggsy and calls Eggsy by her first name. Obviously, Eggsy finds out his first name by the next time she sees him and insists on calling him Forsythe until he cracks. There must be something in the water wherever he gets his tweed suits because he never really does.

He has a wife and he talks about her and her party functions and her stuffy friends way too much. He has a son and the only thing that Eggsy knows about him is that he's around her age. Forsythe sighs whenever she asks after him (mainly to get on his nerves) and changes the subject.

They go out on their first patrol together around three weeks in. Under Forsythe's guidance, Eggsy slays her first vampire and her second vampire and her third and — you get the picture.

After the patrol, Eggsy tells him, "You know, you're kind of a bit old to be a Watcher, bruv."

It's true. Amala's Watcher is a young twenty-something who probably never experienced the Cold War. Paige's is her weird but cool goth cousin who's not much older than her. Forsythe is pushing 60 and she knows he watches Last Of The Summer Wine and Bargain Hunt whenever it's on telly.

Forsythe makes a pained face.

"I didn’t used to be," he says, finally, and Eggsy swears in her head because she forgot about the attack on the old Watcher's Council building and how the hell did she not connect him with the old Watchers even though he's ancient?

The air remains heavy and it stays that way all the way home, and Dean socks her in the shoulder for being out too late and threatens to ground her. She goes to bed and tries to ignore Dean's mates' shouting at the Everton match through the thin walls. The medal glints on her chain where the streetlights hit it through the window and she rubs her finger against the numbers she now has memorised. She takes it off and chucks it in her bottom drawer with all of the rest of the crap.

If she ever even needs it, she knows the number. She goes to sleep with her hand curled around the stake under her pillow and tries hard not to think about _oxfords not brogues._

_—_


	2. Chapter 2

—

They fuck up sorting out a demon's nest when Eggsy's seventeen and battle-hardened and Forsythe has retired but still sends her ornate Christmas and Birthday and Get Well Soon cards from Harrods whenever he can.

The demon's some sort of spider-based one. It's called an Ariadne — descended and named after the mother of spiders herself, apparently — and instead of trapping flies in its web it traps people instead. Paige and Eggsy are put on the case.

There's not much to be said about it, but Eggsy agonises over it for years.

Paige goes missing halfway through the case. She just doesn't come into work. Eggsy forces herself to not worry about it and her and Amanda go and check out one of the possible nest-spaces together.

The Underground has delays because of snow, so they wait thirty fucking minutes and when they finally get to the warehouse they discover Paige, dead, on the web, and Eggsy goes ballistic. Sees red. She shoots the Ariadne in the fucking sternum with her crossbow and it explodes in a dusty mess and Eggsy collapses, too tired to cry out.

"Fuck, Eggsy," says Amanda sharply, holding her back as she sinks to the ground. "Calm down. I've got you."

The funeral's on a Thursday. She gets to miss school, which would be good on any other occasion.

Eggsy raids her mum's wardrobe for the classiest darkest thing she can find. She decides to plait her hair but her fingers are shaking too hard to do it and she just leaves it down.

She stays at the back of the church with the rest of the Slayers and when Paige's dad stays behind to greet them all she doesn't say a word when she shakes his hand. What would she have said, anyway?

_"Hi, Hamish, sorry I was too late to save your daughter's life. In fact, I think I'm the reason she’s dead"?_

The day is solemn. It rains like it always does in movies when there's a funeral. She doesn't go to the wake. Instead, Jamal and Liam take her out for drinks after even though she's not quite eighteen yet. They get kicked out of the pub and Eggsy gets her first entry written on her public record.

No-one judges her for not being on form that day, or the day after.

She stops receiving cards from Forsythe three months after she turns twenty.

—

At twenty two, she joins the Royal Air Force because they don't fucking accept females into the Royal Marines yet and she wants to do something important other than Slaying. Amala calls her stupid and reckless and asks her to get her the numbers of all the hot male pilots. Eggsy just laughs at her.

She still thinks about Paige on most days. It's hard not to. She hasn't seen Paige's dad since the funeral, and it weighs on her mind that he never got closure, but she can't very well call him out of the blue and tell him about the Ariadne. About the warehouse. About how Paige relied on her to save her and how she didn't.

She gets half of her Basic Training done when her mum rings her up having a panic attack because she doesn’t want to lose Eggsy too. Like her dad. Jesus.

It's one thing to have to console your mum on the settee after a particularly violently charged argument with your stepfather. It's another having to do it in a ditch in the middle of Wales with shit cell reception and worse teammates who take the piss out of everything you do. Her mum is crying down the line, and Eggsy cracks. She makes plans to leave and tells her Superior Officer that she's giving up. She's going. Squadron Leader Alexander Rider looks at her long and hard and tells her that it's been an honour training her. Cynically, she thinks that can't be much true.

Eggsy packs up her shit and goes back to South London.

Her mum hugs her when she gets home. It feels colder than her usual hugs. The mugs stink of something way stronger than gin when she goes into the kitchen. Eggsy catches sight of her face in the old telly when she walks past and cringes when she sees the short hair that she'd grown to appreciate during Basic. She'd have to grow it out. (She doesn't.)

Her mum tells her how grateful she is that Eggsy came home. Dean tells her that he expected her to fail, and smirks, and she wants to smash his smug face in like Samuelle taught her to do all those years ago. She curls her fingers into a fist and counts to ten, uncurling them a little bit with each number.

There's silence, and then —

"Eggsy, I'm pregnant," says her mum, with a small, unsure smile, and Dean's grin seems a little bit to the right of the emotion he was going for. Veering into smugness.

Eggsy eyes the Argos catalogue laid open on the side table and vows silently that she's going to give her sister (none of that half-sister bollocks) the childhood she deserves. A good one. One not like hers.

She goes out on patrol that night and stakes five vampires outside a pub on Savile Row.

—

When the baby is born, all pink and crying and shrivelled up and looking like a fucking gremlin, all Eggsy can think is that she's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. They name her Daisy Emma, after Eggsy's Nan, but they don't tell Dean that that's who she's named after.

Eggsy's mates pop around to coo at Daisy and they all hold her. Liam pretends to drop the baby and Brandon smacks him on the shoulder. Amala demands pictures and Samuelle sends a care package because her brother was born two years ago and they don't need all the baby books anymore. Amanda asks to be made godmother even though the Unwin-Baker household a) is not Christian and b) can't afford to book the church even if they were.

They might be bat-shit fucking mental, but Eggsy's never been more grateful for her friends.

They all have a game of kickabout in the green near the hospital with Ryan's football, the one with Eggsy's now ratty football cosy on. Originally splitting it boys vs. girls, they later switch to mixed teams because the Slayers fucking dominate the game if she doesn't say so herself.

Eggsy's team wins 5-3. They celebrate by singing a drinking song with edited, more offensive lyrics and by buying a Colin the Caterpillar birthday cake from the 24-hour M&S and sharing it between themselves. Jamal and Liam justify buying it because "it's Daisy's birthday, bruv".

It's the best 1AM cake she's ever tasted.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees Amala and Ryan slink off to the bathroom together and knows that she's allowed to give them shit and they're going to take it because her little sister's just been born and Eggsy's allowed to celebrate. Dean yells at her to get in the car around thirty minutes later, and when she does Daisy's strapped in a pink car seat that Eggsy swears she saw in the charity shop yesterday. Her mum looks exhausted.

"You could have stayed in the bed," says Eggsy to her mum, when the car goes silent on one of the ringroads.

Dean growls, "I wasn't staying in that fucking hospital. It smells fucking rank in there," and that's the end of that conversation.

Daisy starts crying when they get back to the estate. Eggsy squeezes the car seat handle as if to say _get used to it, Daisy-baby._

They don't have enough space for Daisy in any of the rooms so they set her down in Samuelle's brother's old cot in the middle of the living room. Eggsy's told to fuck off back to bed after she lingers near Daisy to try and gauge why she's crying.

The moment she gets back to her room she yanks open her bottom drawer and takes the medal out. She puts it on a new chain (the old one was kind of grotty to be honest) and fastens it around her neck.

She's kind of really fucking ready to believe in gentlemen and owed favours again.

—

At the age of twenty five, Eggsy deliberately crashes a stolen car into a police one and asks for a miracle.

She gets it in the form of Kingsman.

—

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on that bombshell, goodnight!  
>  _(On the change of Eggsy's military training — the Royal Air Force opened all roles to both genders in 2016, whereas the Royal Marine Commandos started to train female applicants in 2017. I figured that the RAF would be the more realistic option even though neither is quite right in real life. Still, there's probably a lot of inaccuracies about the very few details I’ve given because, yeah, I'm not in the RAF.)_


End file.
